Technical Abstract:
Printing ink vehicles that require no petroleum components were prepared from soybean oil. Soybean oil was heat polymerized at constant temperature in a nitrogen atmosphere to the desired viscosity. Our objectives for this study are to collect and analyze the byproducts (fumes) of soybean oil during heat polymerization. GC-MS are used for quantitative identification. About 90% of the byproducts are identified as the mixture of different free fatty acids such as decanoic acid, palmitic acid, linoleic acid, oleic acid, stearic acid, and 9-tricosene. With different collection times, the weight % of fatty acids changed randomly.